Dubai launches outdoor advertising guide

Dubai, June 24, 2013

The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and the Dubai Municipality have launched a unified guide of outdoor advertisements that addresses the standards and conditions for external promotions in the emirate.

It is currently available for individuals and companies at the customer service centers at the RTA and the Dubai Municipality.

Maitha Bin Adi, CEO of Dubai Traffic and Roads Corporation at RTA, said that the guide is the culmination of joint work that the best international experiments and conducted vast comparisons of the distinctive advertisement procedures in around 20 countries.

She also pointed out that the preparation team will meet on a regular basis to review and update the guide to cope with and compete with the best international standards in this field.

“The guide is characterized for its smoothness, clarity and uncomplicated procedures. It aims at unifying visions and technical procedures concerning the external advertisement stipulations with the multi-authorization entities for the advertisement,” Bin Adi explained.

“The guide targets the advertising companies, the new investors, the foreign companies and agencies, employees working in the external advertising field, employees at the customer service domain at the Emirate’s level as well as the foreign delegations and municipalities.”

She added that the guide aims at facilitating the categorization of all sorts of external advertisements for the foreign clients according to the type of advertisement, its location, and the delivery of information for the users of the guide by enhancing the guide with photos, measurements, dimensions to upgrade the external advertisement industry in the Emirate.

Bin Adi noted that the guide aims at ensuring the best traffic safety levels in the Emirate revealing that as a Safety Matrix has been introduced to measure the level of traffic safety in terms of the advertisement’s location, the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the billboard.

The manual also explores the potential dangers of setting up such billboards that could lead to accidents at the suggested site.

Dawood Al Hajri, director of Planning Department at the Dubai Municipality said that the unified guide of advertisement stressed on the need to preserve the architectural facet of Dubai and the necessity to display distinctive advertisements in accordance with the stipulations mentioned in the guide.

He also mentioned that the guide has generated new investment opportunities by suggesting new sites and qualities for these billboards. The guide also contained information and procedures of the external advertisements terminologies, the types of unauthorized advertisements, where this guide to be implemented in addition to the special requirements related to other service agencies including the nonstructural frame and the electric conductors.

He also said that the guide also mentions the removal of the erroneous advertisement practices reiterating the need of not using the buildings’ facets for any advertisement of commercial names, and it also specified a general categorization of all sorts of external advertisements as each type includes the designs of advertisements with their different shapes, determining the measurements and dimensions and the size of letters.

He also emphasized that the guide contains five new evaluation criteria mainly dividing the Emirate of Dubai in terms of the advertisement’s shape and design to a number of Digital Zones, Beach Zones, Dubai Creek Zone, Greenery Zones, Heritage Zones, and Dubai Entrance Zones.

He referred to the introduction of new standards in accepting an advertisement billboard that are based on the advertising density relating to the number of billboards in a certain area according to the data in that Macro Density, the Visual Density or the spaces between the advertisements and the other existing standing boards in the Buffer Density.

Al Hajri mentioned that the guide included provisions of strength of decampment, durability and quality of construction materials and the ability of these the billboards to uphold from constructional aspects, method of their setting up and the backlogs.

In addition to the stipulation related to the advertising content, it should contain Arabic language and the national identity, in addition to the ethical, beauty, safety and clarity elements, he added. – TradeArabia News Service